Anna’s Adventures

I am sending back the key that let me into Bluebeard’s study.
Because he would make love to me
I am sending back the key
In his eye’s darkroom I can see
My X-rayed heart; dissected body
I am sending back the key that let me into Bluebeard’s study.

- Sylvia Plath

Yes, I am sending back the key.

When she was a virgin, the girl’s brothers went away to war. Her father was a cruel man, emotionally cold: needing warmth but untouched by the brightest lights. After he died, there was noone to guide the girl in choosing a mate.

When Bluebeard came a-courting, her older sisters were wary. He was odd-looking (the girl found him interesting); he was eccentric (she found him charming); he was rumoured to have married before and murdered his wives (the girl thought there must be a rational explanation).

So, she married him (and her sisters we relieved it wasn’t their duty to marry this monstor). He took her to his castle, through the fog, across the moat and gave her the keys to every room. She was mistress now. Though he asked her to never, ever, go into his study.

Of course she respected this privacy. What maleficence could possibly go on inside this man’s private space? When he went away on business, and her sisters came to stay they taunted her about her right as mistress to enter each room. What had he to hide?

So she creeps up to the room, peers through the keyhole, breathes in and takes out her key. On openning the room, she sees the glorious horror of Bluebeard’s previous wives; executed, tortured, mutilated and adorning the room. She imagines herself punished with the same fate for her curiosity and mistrust, and is so shocked that she drops the key.

Though it is a small key, simple and brass, she can’t remove the blood staining it. She scrubs it with sand. She buries it to purify it under the moon. She hides it, but the blood soaks through, staining her hands, clothes, and betraying her loss of innocence.

Her betrayal, the knowledge gained, changes her. When Bluebeard returns, she is afraid of him instead of fascinated. She flees as he pursues her up each flight of stairs in the castle, until she locks herself into a room and he pounds on the door with a sword.

Miraculously, her two brothers return from the war and murder Bluebeard and the girl inherits every treasure of the castle.

The secrets of a cold man no longer interest me. The mystique of cruelty and aloofness can’t compare to the pleasure of my own imagination, my own company and my freedom to love. Not to possess sexually, but to love openly, unreservedly without shame or fear of falling, without recourse to safety nets and artificial devices of the heart.

The brothers who rescue me are the males in my head and my heart. When I am a wife, these brothers remain dormant. When I am a daughter to my mother, these brothers are absent. When I am a lover, I forget them. But when I call them by name, they will come because they are my brothers.

Famous Blue Raincoat

It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane’s awake –

She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear –

Sincerely, L. Cohen

What you gave up when you acted this way

Dreams

Poems are coming to me in my dreams, but I forget them when I wake up!

Who is Anna, anyway?

My mental healthiness hasn’t been better for a long time. I figured out that I’m doing a lot of things because I should, and that’s really untenable.

I was talking yesterday to a fellow ex-”gifted and talented” child about parents, society and expectations. Turns out we had rather similar experiences… For one thing, having the pleasing aspects of yourself praised unconditionally, and the less-pleasing aspects of yourself just ignored, or separated out. So being fractured because you’re too clever, too lonely, too needy, too desperate for peers, too wonderful and too terrible at the same time. Kids your own age can’t understand you. You get along with older kids until they get their own lives. Adults just go “what the fuck?!” and are condescendingly interested in you as a triviality, or are outright hostile.

Ack, such was life! Its kinda no wonder that I twisted myself into knots trying to “be good”, go stable and most of all finish things. Even when those things were very, very, very bad for me. But my best intentions aren’t enough, and I’m happy to realise that now. Maybe a new formula will be - “does it please me?”, then “is it good for me?”, then “does it please my family and close friends?” instead of “is this the right thing to do?”.

Audioslutting

Kal has introduced me to lastfm and audioscrobbler… Audioscrobbler sends your recently played tracks to lastfm, where you can navigate around to similar tracks, things other people who liked what you liked liked. Its fun. The radio “play songs from bands like this band I like” is a very fun way to burn bandwidth and find music that you may’ve missed due to, gee, I dunno, having a life instead of spending every waking second at redeye records.

Yay! Music that I like and didn’t have to pay $30 to discover!!

Pretty teens
Smooth and keen
They dye their hair without despair
For gorgeous colours play
A multifaceted display
Which signals only unity
And not defray

They hide for they are wise
Playing peacock in disguise
False plummage a-swelling
Pretending they’re rebelling
Dissemble when confronted
“I’m not the bird you hunted”

Casting off that brilliant hair
Wriggling from the hunter’s snare
They display a nudity
Perfect, shining, ordinary

I can’t resist you
You say “come” and I come
Howling into the pillow
Into your apartment
In the middle of the night

I’m ignoring my friends
My life
My hard-won freedom
For you
Because you say “come”, “stay”, and “I like you”

Its an act of submission
But I’m not a submissive

Its my driving desire
For the pleasure
I find in our bedly leisure
That brings me back
When you say “come”

I won’t say it
I can’t say it
(I want you back)You know how to get to the core
Oh cut me cut me cut me

Make love with me
Let us lacerate each other

If your’s is the last face I see
So be it
So be it
So be it

Take all of me
Leave me broken
Rag doll anna
Broken spine
Flesh bled dry

Oh cut me cut me cut me
Love me love me love me

But I won’t say it
(I want you back)

I wish the world would disappear
Wishing never wrought time from its titanium mold
It never succeeded as it sought to unwind the heavenly galactic clock
Not send space to rotate homocentric impossibilities
And though it may have persuaded many a maiden to fly to the stars
No wish ‘ere persuaded gravity to turn its eye and let her

Yet a wish has created this
This little world
I see the million music-made rosettes spinning on the wall
I know that a wish, and nothing more than this shall set this elfish tune

A world, a wish
Never ask for more than this

Nobody loves you
So you say

Well I do
But not in that way

I’m not your mama
I’m more like a sister

With our fighting and spiting
Tension builds like a blister

Maybe you’ll realise
One gloomy day

What you gave up
When you acted this way

I never wanted a husband
Not even a lover

All my overtures sent you
Running for cover

Sure I’m crazy
But no more than you

I just wanted a moment
That’s tender and blue

But alas and alack
Its time to backtrack

To pretend we were friends
But no more than that

Stealth strain a lick of sweat
marching crawling preserving their breath
they’re coming to get me

black on black on black on black

i’ve saved myself for something else
my bones are private
they haven’t found me yet